A three-day journey through innovation, AI, and the evolution of enterprise accounting
The Game Has Changed
October 27-29, 2025, marked a watershed moment for the accounting industry. At Intuit Connect 2025, CEO Sasan Goodarzi called it "the largest people-driven disruption we have ever experienced in our lifetime." Unlike past technology shifts, AI has democratized intelligence, placing unprecedented power into the hands of every accounting professional and business owner.
Intuit unveiled a comprehensive suite of innovations designed to transform mid-market accounting with an ambitious goal: double the $6.7 trillion represented in the room to 50% of U.S. GDP within five years. The three-day event delivered a roadmap backed by billions in investment and fundamental reimagining of what's possible when human intelligence meets artificial intelligence.
In our soon-to-launch Construction Edition....they are gonna be able to run from proposals and budgets to phases and cost codes, progressive invoicing, change orders, profitability tracking, end-to-end, so that they can all operate in the platform together.
- Christine Di Martini, VP of Mid Market Marketing
For firms like RedHammer and forward-thinking businesses navigating the treacherous gap between QuickBooks and legacy ERPs, Intuit Connect 2025 delivered answers to questions we've been asking for years. How do we serve growing construction companies without forcing them into archaic, inflexible systems? How do we scale advisory services without scaling headcount proportionally? How do we stay competitive when the mid-market space is expanding faster than our ability to serve it?
All-in-One Platform
What excites us most is the partnership model Intuit is building with RedHammer. Partner Scott Franchini, who is part of Intuit's Lighthouse Group run by Sherif Gayed, was actively involved in sessions providing direct feedback to Intuit leaders on the future of their products. This collaborative approach ensures that the solutions being built truly address the real-world challenges construction firms and their advisors face every day.
The answer arrived in three major announcements: the launch of Intuit Enterprise Suite: Construction Edition, the launch of Intuit Accountant Suite, and the unveiling of Intuit Intelligence. Each innovation stands powerful on its own, but together on a unified platform, they represent nothing less than a revolution in how mid-market businesses and their accounting partners will operate.
TL;DR
- Day 2 deep dive: Intuit Intelligence with vibe coding (build apps without code), AI agents for customers/payroll/accounting, Intuit Accountant Suite with firm capacity management, and the proven Expert Platform (23M annual interactions, 1M appointments scheduled) powering everything
- Construction edition game-changer: Christine Di Martini showcased IES with AIA-style invoicing, project management from proposals to profitability tracking, phases and cost codes, progressive invoicing, and change orders—all launching soon to bridge the $7-10M revenue gap
- Intuit Intelligence differentiators: Unlike ChatGPT, it's built on customer-owned financial data, trained with domain-specific models understanding payroll/taxes, connects to platform and third-party apps, and operates at unprecedented scale (188M LLM interactions, 60B daily predictions, 10K AI deployments)
- Mid-market panel brought real stories: Sharon Ourian (first IES customer, $400K in savings), Scott Franchini (RedHammer), and Jordan Fladell (Aprio, $300M AI investment) shared the practitioner perspective—from the "Cybertruck in an Italian alley" analogy capturing legacy ERP frustration to the win-win-win partnership model that's finally bridging the software gap for construction firms
- Real-world validation: $400K savings for one business, 2.6M customers on platform, firms saving 12+ hours monthly with accounting agents, getting paid 5 days faster, and the Expert Platform's 8-year track record processing 6M documents automatically
- Partnership in action: RedHammer Partner Scott Franchini (Intuit's Lighthouse advisory group led by Sherif Gayed) provided direct feedback during sessions, exemplifying the co-creation model where accountants aren't just users—they're building the future together
Day 1: Setting the Stage for Transformation (October 27, 2025)
Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi set an ambitious vision for the future, introducing three massive connected innovations: an all-in-one platform with AI agents, Intuit Enterprise Suite for mid-market customers, and Intuit Intelligence as a revolutionary system that learns and improves continuously. The day established the core philosophy that AI plus human intelligence (HI) equals the future of accounting, with early adopters already saving 12+ hours monthly and getting paid 5 days faster.
Sasan Goodarzi's Visionary Keynote
CEO Sasan Goodarzi took the stage on Day 1 with a message that resonated throughout the conference: "You have to believe it to see it." His keynote wasn't just about product announcements. It was about envisioning a future where accounting professionals are empowered with a system of intelligence that learns, reasons, acts, executes, and monitors performance in a continuous loop of improvement.
"We believe that AI is the new UI, and we believe that HI, human intelligence, what we do together, is the most important mile," Goodarzi emphasized. This philosophy of AI plus HI underpins every innovation Intuit unveiled at Connect 2025.
Goodarzi teased three massive, connected innovations: an all-in-one platform eliminating the need for 25-30 disconnected apps, Intuit Enterprise Suite for mid-market customers, and Intuit Intelligence as a revolutionary system of intelligence. "What I'm going to show you is either generally available now or will be in the next few months," he promised.
The All-in-One Platform Vision
The first major reveal showcased QuickBooks transformed into a true all-in-one platform with a virtual team of AI agents. "No more 25, 30 apps. No more my data is siloed," Goodarzi declared. The platform now manages everything from lead to cash in one place, with AI agents that don't just identify issues but actually execute solutions.
Early results are already impressive. Among the 2.6 million customers using the platform, those engaging with the accounting agent save over 12 hours monthly, while users of AI agents for money management get paid five days earlier. For small businesses fighting for every hour and every dollar, these improvements translate directly to survival and growth.
Day 2: Deep Dive into Innovation (October 28, 2025)
The second day delivered on the promises from Day 1 with deep product demonstrations and the official launch of Intuit Accountant Suite. Christine DeMartine unveiled the highly anticipated Construction Edition for IES with AIA-style invoicing and comprehensive project management capabilities. The afternoon's mid-market panel featuring Sharon Ourian, Scott Franchini from RedHammer, and Jordan Fladell from Aprio brought these innovations to life through real customer stories of transformation and $400,000+ in savings.
Intuit Product Keynote
Alex Balazs: Unveiling Intuit Intelligence
Intuit CTO, Alex Balazs opened Day 2 by announcing Intuit's fundamental transformation. "For over 40 years, Intuit has been a system of record for millions of businesses. But now we're moving into something fundamentally different, fundamentally new. We're transforming from a system of record into a system of intelligence," Balazs declared.
He unveiled Intuit Intelligence as a revolutionary system enabling users to ask, explore, and build using natural language. The demonstration showcased month-end close automation where the system connects to cloud drives, finds documents, pulls templates, and builds workflows automatically. "What once required multiple steps and a lot of time now seamlessly happens powered by Intuit Intelligence."
The breakthrough announcement was vibe coding, building custom apps without writing code. "You'll be able to describe what you want and Intuit Intelligence will build it for you," Balazs explained, demonstrating dashboard widgets created through simple prompts.
Addressing the inevitable ChatGPT comparison, Balazs outlined key differentiators: customer-owned trusted financial data, domain-specific models understanding payroll and taxes, and platform integration. The scale is staggering: 188 million LLM interactions, 60 billion daily predictions, and 10,000 AI deployments. "This is what happens when you combine modern LLMs, 40 years of domain expertise, and our data stewardship together."
Joe Preston: Small Business Innovations
Joe Preston, VP of Product for Intuit's Business Platform, took the stage as both executive and small business owner. "My wife and I currently have a side-hustle business. We use QuickBooks and Mailchimp every day to run our business, and that's why I couldn't be more excited to walk you through what we're launching."
Preston announced a MasterCard partnership where business card purchases trigger text messages with receipt upload links, automatically categorized by the Accountant Agent. He outlined the transformed platform where "AI is now the brain" orchestrating Accounting, Customer, Payroll, and Payments Agents.
Through fictional CEO Alejandra's story, Preston demonstrated transformative capabilities. Intuit Intelligence analyzes profitability in real-time, comparing against similar businesses and offering actionable suggestions. Customer Agent manages lead-to-cash entirely from mobile, finding leads, drafting responses, creating estimates, converting to invoices. Payroll Agent texts employees for hours, catches missing data, and notifies when ready to run.
"On average, we see chasing timesheets takes two to three hours per pay period," Preston noted. With Payroll Agent, "she has just gained back hours in her week chasing down data from her team. This gives business owners time back to do what they love, and that's grow their business."
Christine De Martini: Unveils IES Construction Edition
Day 2's morning keynote featured Christine Di Martini, VP of Marketing for Mid-Market at Intuit, taking the stage with remarkable news. "One year ago, on this very stage, we announced Intuit Enterprise Suite because we shared in the conviction with so many of you in this room that the mid-market solutions needed to be reimagined," DeMartine began.
The progress has been stunning. "Over the last year, we have had four major releases, hundreds of capabilities shipped across multi-entity, business intelligence, industry solutions, end-to-end compliance, and gap and automation," she announced. "And we are certainly not slowing down."
The construction edition demonstration showcased game-changing features. Candace, the fictional controller in the demo, managed five entities seamlessly. The platform revealed AIA-style invoices. "Where are all my construction clients and firms in the room? Yes! An AIA-style invoice," Di Martini exclaimed to enthusiastic applause.
The upcoming construction edition promises end-to-end capabilities: proposals and budgets, phases and cost codes, progressive invoicing, change orders, and profitability tracking. "In our soon-to-launch construction edition, they are gonna be able to run from proposals and budgets to phases and cost codes, progressive invoicing, change orders, profitability tracking, end-to-end, so that they can all operate in the platform together," Di Martini revealed.
Intuit Enterprise Suite Roadmap: What's Coming
One of the most exciting aspects of Intuit Connect 2025 was the detailed roadmap for IES, particularly for construction businesses. Below is a comprehensive look at existing functionality and what's on the horizon between November 2025 and February 2025:
Karla Uribe: Intuit Accountant Suite — Built By You, For You
Karla Uribe, leading accountant product strategy, officially launched the Intuit Accountant Suite. "I'm not an accountant, but I very much feel like an extended member of this beautiful community. What's really special to me about this role is that I don't just get to build with accountants, I get to build for accountants," she began warmly.
"I'm excited to officially announce the Intuit Accountant Suite is now live!" Uribe declared. The suite addresses critical pain points: multiple QuickBooks realms with scattered clients, too many third-party tools, and poor visibility across products. "It brings together work, teams, and all of your clients into one place to offer you more visibility and control."
The breakthrough announcement centered on capacity management. "One firm recently told us that they allocate an entire week of a quarter, lock themselves in a room to work on firm capacity. We hear you." Intuit's internal capacity tools are now being built directly into the Accountant Suite.
The capacity app provides instant firm-wide utilization visibility, data-backed recommendations for reassigning work based on capacity and expertise, and before-and-after impact analysis. "You're always in control," Uribe emphasized. "Everything I just showed you today is just the beginning."
David Graham: The Expert Platform Powers Everything
David Graham, leading customer success at Intuit, revealed how the proven Intuit Expert Platform will power the Accountant Suite. After visiting firms across Dallas, Toronto, and London, Graham found consistent themes. "One thing kept coming back and surfacing: AI is not a concept anymore, it's a capacity imperative."
Firms face universal challenges: growing but hitting human limits, trying to staff intelligently while finding time to advise. "One large firm described managing capacity as one of their biggest challenges, managing so many professionals across service lines who were great at the client work but were slow at matching the right people to it."
Graham revealed staggering scale: 23 million chats and voice interactions annually, 1 million appointments scheduled, 6 million documents categorized automatically. "This system doesn't just support our experts, it turns every human interaction into fuel for better experiences."
"The Intuit Expert Platform is not just powering Intuit anymore. The message I have for you today is the Intuit Expert Platform will be powering the accounting profession through the Intuit Accountant Suite," Graham declared.
Intuit External Keynote
Keynote Panel: Fueling Success for Mid-Market Businesses and Firms
The afternoon's headline event was the mid-market panel, moderated by Ashley Still, EVP of Intuit's Mid-Market Group. The panel featured Sharon Ourian (first IES customer and Lighthouse member), Scott Franchini (Partner at RedHammer), and Jordan Fladell (Managing Director at Aprio and National Intuit Practice Leader).
Sharon Ourian: Co-Creating the Solution
Sharon Ourian's story exemplifies true partnership. Managing multiple businesses across real estate, internet, cosmetic dermatology, and a global skincare brand, she was ready to leave Intuit because no single platform could handle her complexity. Instead, Intuit sent a team to her office. "We sketched out the basics of what we needed and then, you know, that became like hundreds of hours over the next year," she explained. That collaboration became IES.
The results speak for themselves: $400,000 saved in merchant processing fees alone, with everything now connected in one dashboard. "Everything talks to each other now. One app, you know, there's no more disconnected 20 apps," Sharon shared.
Scott Franchini: Bridging the Software Gap
Scott Franchini brought RedHammer's practitioner perspective to the critical challenge facing mid-market construction firms. "When these companies hit that seven to $10 million mark, they feel like they're kicking off the training wheels...and what they're doing is they're chasing job cost functionality," he explained. The problem? Legacy construction ERPs are archaic and inflexible.
If I coded something wrong, I essentially have to reverse it....it's like taking a Cybertruck and driving it into an alley in the middle of Italy, and you can't open the doors, you can't get out, and all you have to do is reverse yourself and hope you don't break anything or create any collateral damage.
- Scott Franchini - Speaking about Traditional Construction Financial Software
His memorable analogy captured the frustration: "It's like taking a Cybertruck. It's driving it into an alley in the middle of Italy, and you can't open the doors, you can't get out, and all you have to do is reverse yourself to, and you hope that you don't break anything or create any collateral damage."
IES transforms this dynamic. "So now what IES has done is with the new advancements, with the construction, with the reporting, the KPIs and the AI, we've now been able to take and bridge that gap from a functionality perspective, which is huge," Franchini emphasized. With budgets, change orders, nearly 20 reports, and the project agent, construction firms finally get the functionality they need with the agility they love about QuickBooks.
Jordan Fladell: The Partnership Vision
Jordan Fladell represented Aprio, the first mid-market Top 25 firm to become an Intuit partner, backed by a $300 million AI investment. "We're a big believer in HI plus AI. We believe that the human being is a central anchor point for us, and that artificial intelligence is our great enabler," he explained.
Fladell emphasized the win-win-win philosophy: "We look at it as the Intuit platform, right? We look at it from end to end and we think about everything from how do we reimagine tax preparation to make the experience better for our clients, make the experience better for our employees so they can focus on that value add." His closing insight resonated: as firms move up market together, the algorithm really does change, requiring new approaches to meet vastly different customer challenges.
Day 3: The Future of Advisory (October 29, 2025)
The final day focused on the evolution of advisory services in the AI era with a powerful panel of industry leaders discussing the "augmented advisor" concept. Panelists shared how AI enables accountants to provide timely insights that directly impact GDP growth, while emphasizing that technology amplifies human expertise rather than replacing it. The day concluded with a call to action for the profession to embrace change, accelerate training timelines, and recognize that the greatest risk lies in standing still.
The Future of Advisory Panel
Day 3's keynote panel, moderated by Ted Callahan, brought together industry luminaries to discuss how AI will unleash the profession collectively in advisory services. The panelists included Liz Mason (CEO and Founder of High Rock Accounting, CPA in Residence at TaxFigure), Kim Blascoe (Senior Director of CAS Professional Services at CPA.com), Gregg Landers (Managing Director with CBIZ Advisors), and Dixie McCurley (Partner at Cherry Bekaert).
Defining Advisory in the AI Era
Liz Mason provided compelling data on the impact of advisors. "There were some meta studies that showed 10% increase in productivity, 30% decrease in risk of closure when we had timely information in small businesses, there was a 15 to 20% survival rate," she shared. "SSRN did an amazing study where they actually looked at accounting employment in different economies and the effect that accountants have on GDP, and there's an increase in two to 4% for every 10% increase in accounting employment."
Mason introduced the concept of the "augmented advisor," where AI enhances rather than replaces human expertise. "What I'm seeing with the potential of AI is the potential of this augmented advisor where not only do we have this opportunity, we have an obligation. We have an obligation to ourselves, we have an obligation to our clients and to the economy to adopt and adapt and utilize the best technology that's out there to give timely information."
Transforming the Profile of Accounting Professionals
Gregg Landers shared how team composition is evolving. "When I look back at my team five years ago, they were all accountants, right? The training was all technical accounting, those types of things. I look at my team now, I've got, it's comprised of financial analysts, it's comprised of operators in my specialized industries, right?"
He's now specifically recruiting for different skill sets. "I've got four open RECs in my business unit right now. One of 'em, clearly FP&A-type facing, right? The other three are, if you just looked at the name, they're roles that probably don't look different from the past. But I've talked to the recruiters and they said, look, I want someone with data analytics in their background. I want someone with some FP&A in their background. I want anyone you bring me, they need to have a little propeller on their head because I want them to lean into technology."
The Training Evolution: From 20 Years to 2
Kim Blascoe challenged the industry to dramatically accelerate professional development. "It took me about probably 20 years when I think about it to build the expertise that I had from an advisory perspective when I was still in practice. With our new people coming into accounting careers and coming into the CAS space and the advisory space, I talk about, how can we get them there in two years, right? So, the training looks completely different than what we've done in the past."
RedHammer's Perspective: The Gap is Finally Closing
After three transformative days at Intuit Connect 2025, one thing is clear: the software gap plaguing mid-market construction firms is finally closing. For years, clients faced an impossible choice between QuickBooks' usability and legacy ERPs' functionality.
That Cybertruck-in-an-Italian-alley analogy captures the daily reality of construction companies trapped in archaic systems where simple coding errors require reversing transactions and hoping not to create collateral damage. Employees fight their software instead of serving clients. Accountants solve mechanical problems instead of delivering advisory value.
Intuit Enterprise Suite represents the Vespa that navigates those tight alleys, combining QuickBooks' beloved usability, adaptability, interoperability, and flexibility with the power mid-market firms demand. The roadmap delivers exactly what we've been requesting: AIA-style progress billing, cost groups and phases, gantt and kanban visualizations, field-to-office collaboration, and mobile workforce apps. These features arrive in the next few months, not years.
The partnership model excites us most. As Aprio's Jordan Fladell emphasized, this creates win-win-wins: clients get better technology, Intuit gains market penetration, and firms like RedHammer serve clients more effectively. We're co-creating the future, not just buying tools. The Intuit Accountant Suite provides unified client management at scale, AI-powered Client Insights identify opportunities proactively, and Intuit Intelligence amplifies capacity without proportionally scaling headcount.
For construction firms considering IES, the value proposition is clear: seamless migration (days for desktop, weeks from other systems), enterprise capabilities without enterprise complexity or cost, intuitive interfaces everyone can use immediately, and continuous AI innovation that improves daily. You keep what you love about Intuit while gaining what you need to compete and grow. You don't choose between usability and power anymore. You have both.
With IES and Intuit Intelligence, we finally deliver the strategic guidance, proactive insights, and transformative value our clients deserve. AI handles the mechanical problems that consumed our time. Our team focuses on what humans do best: understanding client goals, navigating complex decisions, and providing wisdom from experience. The future of mid-market accounting isn't coming. It's here, transforming how we serve construction companies every day.
We'll see you at Connect | October 26-28, 2026 at ARIA in Las Vegas!
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